Author, Playwright, Poet, Adventurer

Bio

Even at a young age, he was impossible to keep clean.

“Will Herr is a mysterious beast; a cryptozoological curiosity like the Swampsquatch or the chupachalupa of southern Delaware. He is often spoken of in drunken rambles by those who caught a glimpse of him in a roadside diner or heard his haunting, baritone laughter inside a cloud of cigarette smoke. Some speak of him in hushed tones, knowing that to speak his name might summon him and his unearthly steed Elvis. Will Herr is a gunfighting philosopher, a wandering minstrel of tales beyond time, and the intruder in the dirt. He is legend.”—Jay Smith, Author, Parsec Award winning producer of HG World

I was born in Santa Monica, California to a British mother and a German-American father. During my early life I traveled with my family across much of the United States, and it was during this time that I developed a love for reading–specifically, for the work of Edgar Rice Burroughs. I moved on from there to the Oxford English Dictionary, the Analects of Confucius, Tolkien, Heinlein, and Aasimov. When I did not have my nose in a book, I was either building some wild new invention, or destroying something as I tried to test it. There may have been some miserable failures at sports, during that period, but I admit nothing. Sometime during those early years, I won a writing contest. After that, the dye had been set.

My early career involved journalism, a stint as a very bad news director for an AM radio station, horrid attempts at fiction (I got better), and a love affair with danger of all kinds. I fell off of cliffs, got trampled by bulls, and otherwise convinced myself that I was, indeed, immortal. Really, it was just blind chance (or the hand of God) that kept me alive.

Of course, writing is not a dangerous activity, and I returned to it as I worked my way first through a community college, and then through the University of Iowa. Across that period I spent a good amount of time in the college newspaper’s office, wrote almost nonstop, and studied everything from medieval literature to Greek drama. The latter caught my attention first, and I pursued it at the U of I. At the same time, I published Jeremy and February, a character study of two serial criminals that I had the good fortune to interview. They considered themselves as vampires and were-creatures, and were later arrested. I also produced The White Room, a one act play, in No Shame Theater in Iowa City, IA. This was back in 1995.

At this point, a girl named Joann chased me out to Iowa City, and nailed my left foot to the floor. While I was running in circles, she corralled a priest, and the rest was history. My son, Robert, was born in 1996. Following his birth, I set aside my writing goals, left the university, and joined the work-force. Writing might be a romantic dream, but romantic dreams do not feed a growing moose. I was enough of a realist to understand that authors typically starve more than they feast, and I regret nothing. Over the following 20 years, I worked at any job which would hire me. I spent a good amount of time behind the wheel of a truck, and I spent nearly as much at different levels of management within the corporate world.

In 2012, I published The Collective. It sold better than 1,000 copies, mostly in India (I have no idea why), and reintroduced me to the world of publishing. I am now working at a number of projects. The most work-intensive of these is a series entitled The Broken Throne.

When I am not working, I like to work. If I cannot work, my hobbies include sleeping, physics, reading, and work. I still have the same young and lovely wife who entrapped me so many years ago, and together we support a spoiled Irish Staffordshire Terrier named Duke.